Paula Broadwell likely one of thousands of Americans subject to Gmail snooping.

The news this week is full of speculation about how the affair between CIA director David Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, was discovered. The revelation forced Petraeus' resignation on Friday. Press accounts have suggested that the FBI learned of the affair while digging through Broadwell's Gmail account.

Broadwell would be just one of thousands of Americans whose private communications Google has turned over to law enforcement officials this year, according to a new Google report. In recent years, Google has set the standard for transparency among major tech companies by releasing statistics twice a year about the volume of takedown and surveillance requests it receives (Twitter has recently started offering similar information as well). The latest batch of Google's statistics, covering the first half of 2012, is out this week. It shows that the volume of surveillance and takedown requests has continued to grow rapidly. The United States leads the pack in the volume of surveillance requests, while Turkey, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Brazil were all major sources of takedown requests.

Worldwide, 34,000 Google users were the subject of information requests by governments in the first half of 2012. That represents a 36 percent increase over the same period in 2011. Takedown requests grew at an even faster clip. Non-copyright takedown requests almost doubled, from 949 requests in the first half of 2011 to 1,791 in the first half of this year.

The volume of copyright-related takedowns, mostly from private organizations, grew fastest of all. Unlike the other categories, which are released every six months, Google releases copyright takedown statistics on a weekly basis. In mid-2011, Google was receiving takedown requests for approximately 100,000 URLs per week. Today, the search giant is getting requests for almost 2 million URLs every week:

These statistics suggest an escalating arms race between copyright holders and file sharing sites. A handful of organizations, including Fox Media, the Recording Industry Association of America and its UK counterpart the BPI, and dedicated takedown firms such as Degban and Takedown Piracy LLC, account for a significant fraction of these takedown requests. Degban is the world's leader, issuing 1.75 million takedowns related to 3,528 domains on behalf of 47 different copyright holders.

Surveillance and censorship around the world

The United States leads the pack in government surveillance requests. Law enforcement officials in the United States issued almost 8,000 requests for user information, and Google complied with the requests 90 percent of the time. For comparison, the next most active country is India. With four times the population of the United States, India submitted just 2,319 requests, and Google complied with only about two-thirds of those requests. Indeed, Ars Technica's calculations suggest that Google complied with fewer than 6,800 information requests from all countries other than the United States put together, compared with more than 7,100 successful requests by the United States.

The report includes detailed country-level anecdotes that give an interesting window into the friction between the global Internet and local laws. For example, Thailand has laws prohibiting insults to their king. Turkey has similar laws prohibiting insults to Atatürk, the George Washington of modern Turkey. During the first half of 2012, Google was asked to block videos insulting both figures. In both cases, Google complied by blocking locals from accessing some of the videos.

Google faced numerous requests around the world to remove materials critical of senior government officials. In many cases, the company refused to comply with these requests. Google says it refused to remove "a YouTube video of statements made against members of law enforcement" in Australia. Google also refused to remove videos and blog posts critical of public officials in Brazil, China, France, the Phillipines, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Google did remove content that allegedly defamed a German politician's wife from search results. In the United States, the Mountain View firm removed 223 links to "websites that allegedly defame organizations and individuals" from its search results.

We'll close with the caveat we include every time we cover Google's transparency reports: while Google's statistics provide an informative peek into a world that is generally hidden from public view, they also provide an extremely incomplete picture of the volume of surveillance activity. Without comparable statistics from Google competitors such as Facebook and Microsoft, it's difficult to know the overall volume of surveillance. More importantly, much government surveillance doesn't target Web hosts at all. Major telecom carriers like AT&T and Verizon are also major targets, and as far as we know none of them have followed Google's good example and released surveillance statistics.

Google may also be legally barred from disclosing certain types of surveillance in the United States, so it's possible the statistics they have shared with us dramatically understate the scale of Google's participation in government surveillance. Google's report is a valuable source of information. But to get a comprehensive understanding of government surveillance, we really need governments themselves to collect and publish statistics on their own surveillance activities.

Update: A Google representative emailed us to offer one reason for the large number of US information requests: "government requests for user data from the US include those issued by US authorities on behalf of other governments due to mutual legal assistance treaties (MLAT) and other diplomatic mechanisms." Google wasn't able to give any details on what fraction of "United States" requests were made on behalf of foreign governments.

This is why we can't have nice things. Take corporate interest and government out of the equation, and we have the most useful tool the world has ever seen. Sure, it might be used by those with less than noble intent for nefarious deeds, but that applies to any tool such as crowbars, copiers, or guns. I'm willing to take my chances with liberty vs. government intervention.

Anyone trusting Gmail at this point is asking for their privacy to be violated, not just on the high level of ad insertion, but on a deeply personal level–if/when anyone in authority wants to access it. The convenience of Gmail isn't worth it any longer.

"The news this week is full of speculation about how the affair between CIA director David Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, was discovered. The revelation forced Petraeus' resignation on Friday. "

Why did he have to resign? It's not like he forced her to do anything. From what I read they were snooping on his email because they were afraid that his account may have been compromised. They discover that it wasn't. Why couldn't they stop at that? Who cares that he had an affair? Sure, it is something that society likes to punish, but unless she was a Russian or Chinese spy, I dont understan how was this relevant to their original "national security matter" case?

"The news this week is full of speculation about how the affair between CIA director David Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, was discovered. The revelation forced Petraeus' resignation on Friday. "

Why did he have to resign? It's not like he forced her to do anything. From what I read they were snooping on his email because they were afraid that his account may have been compromised. They discover that it wasn't. Why couldn't they stop at that? Who cares that he had an affair? Sure, it is something that society likes to punish, but unless she was a Russian or Chinese spy, I dont understan how was this relevant to their original "national security matter" case?

Because unlike what hedonists and the French (but I repeat myself.. j/k) would have you believe, violating marriage vows (that is, the spouse doesn't consent) reveals severe ethical and behavioral flaws that make it clear that Petraeus is not suited for a position of trust and leadership.

That being said, this whole thing would have been largely unremarked if it weren't revealed in conjunction and related to the apparent lapses of intelligence related to the Benghazi murders.

"The news this week is full of speculation about how the affair between CIA director David Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, was discovered. The revelation forced Petraeus' resignation on Friday. "

Why did he have to resign? It's not like he forced her to do anything. From what I read they were snooping on his email because they were afraid that his account may have been compromised. They discover that it wasn't. Why couldn't they stop at that? Who cares that he had an affair? Sure, it is something that society likes to punish, but unless she was a Russian or Chinese spy, I dont understan how was this relevant to their original "national security matter" case?

the FBI and the CIA are like microsoft divisions: allegedly on the same team, actually in it for themselves. in short, the FBI probably thought it was hilarious to embarrass the head of the CIA.

kranchammer wrote:

hat being said, this whole thing would have been largely unremarked if it weren't revealed in conjunction and related to the apparent lapses of intelligence related to the Benghazi murders.

Anyone trusting Gmail at this point is asking for their privacy to be violated, not just on the high level of ad insertion, but on a deeply personal level–if/when anyone in authority wants to access it. The convenience of Gmail isn't worth it any longer.

Repeat: I am not Google's customer. I am Google's product.

You think that doesn't apply to nearly every other email/service provider? They all collect data on you, and sell it to the highest bidders/sell you out to governments, some are just more transparent than others.

The really scary ones are the ones like Microsoft admitting that they can use Kinect to spy on you in your living room for "marketing purposes".

"The news this week is full of speculation about how the affair between CIA director David Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, was discovered. The revelation forced Petraeus' resignation on Friday. "

Why did he have to resign? It's not like he forced her to do anything. From what I read they were snooping on his email because they were afraid that his account may have been compromised. They discover that it wasn't. Why couldn't they stop at that? Who cares that he had an affair? Sure, it is something that society likes to punish, but unless she was a Russian or Chinese spy, I dont understan how was this relevant to their original "national security matter" case?

He had to resign because it had the potential to be an even bigger black eye for the administration than it already was. The Director of the CIA failing to keep his zipper up and having an illicit affair is bad enough, declining to resign thus forcing the President to either force him out or defend him against the opposition when the Administration has much more important things to do is an order of magnitude worse. It's generally taken as given when you're appointed (not elected!) to a very high level in a .gov, .mil, or .com organization, that when you fuck up your private life to the point where it's no longer private, you'll be expected to step down to spare the people who appointed you the embarrassment of being associated with you.

Anyone trusting Gmail at this point is asking for their privacy to be violated, not just on the high level of ad insertion, but on a deeply personal level–if/when anyone in authority wants to access it. The convenience of Gmail isn't worth it any longer.

Repeat: I am not Google's customer. I am Google's product.

You say this as if most commercial email providers would not also comply with warrants and subpoenas from the feds.

It's not as if Google is just selling your data to the government for profit. If the man shows up with a warrant, you typically comply. If anything, my beef is with a law enforcement or judicial system that allows this many demands for info.

Yeah, it's hardly surprising. She's described as a driven, Type A personality, "alpha woman", who's spent her entire life in, around, and writing about the military, and probably saw him, a similarly described hard charger, as the pinnacle of what she thought the successful military "alpha male" should be. He probably saw her as a kindred spirit, someone who shared his intellectual interests and with who he could converse on a level and on subjects his wife would never truly understand or appreciate, wrapped up in a tight fitness-buff package with great tits that's 20 years younger than him. I'm 5 years younger than her and If I was in the same situation (excluding the infidelity angle) I'd do her with zero hesitation. If I was his age, I'd be hitting it like the fist of an angry god.

IIRC, Ms. Broadwell sent threatening emails to a third party from the Gmail account in question. The third party reported the threat to the police, and since the alleged crime crossed state lines, the investigation went to the FBI. IMHO, this sort of situation is not indicative of government overreach.

Also, if I understand correctly, Petraeus and Broadwell shared the Gmail account and used it to conduct their clandestine affair. So Petraeus got caught because his mistress used their "secret" Gmail account to stalk someone, and she got caught for that. Not exactly brilliantly covert operations on either Petraeus' or Broadwell's part.

Anyone trusting Gmail at this point is asking for their privacy to be violated, not just on the high level of ad insertion, but on a deeply personal level–if/when anyone in authority wants to access it. The convenience of Gmail isn't worth it any longer.

Repeat: I am not Google's customer. I am Google's product.

Why the hate? The man is clearly correct. To Google, the average user is the product, whereas the average company (buying ads) is the customer. Take a look at their financials:

For 2011, the revenue stream for "Google Websites" and "Google Network Members Websites" (read: all advertising) counted for a whopping 96% of the revenue. The rest, under "Other", which includes Android, is only 4%.

In short, if the ad business ever goes south, they will monetize your data in any way possible to make money. The company is, and always was, a one-trick pony.

"The news this week is full of speculation about how the affair between CIA director David Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, was discovered. The revelation forced Petraeus' resignation on Friday. "

Why did he have to resign? It's not like he forced her to do anything. From what I read they were snooping on his email because they were afraid that his account may have been compromised. They discover that it wasn't. Why couldn't they stop at that? Who cares that he had an affair? Sure, it is something that society likes to punish, but unless she was a Russian or Chinese spy, I dont understan how was this relevant to their original "national security matter" case?

It made him potentially blackmail-able and therefore compromised by intelligence community standards.

Consider how routine this sort of surveillance must be if it's true that, as has been making the rounds, that this all started because someone that Blackwell was sending mean emails to had a friend in the FBI, so the FBI employee decided to use their position to engage in surveillance as a personal favor.

Anyone trusting Gmail at this point is asking for their privacy to be violated, not just on the high level of ad insertion, but on a deeply personal level–if/when anyone in authority wants to access it. The convenience of Gmail isn't worth it any longer.

Repeat: I am not Google's customer. I am Google's product.

You say this as if most commercial email providers would not also comply with warrants and subpoenas from the feds.

It's not as if Google is just selling your data to the government for profit. If the man shows up with a warrant, you typically comply. If anything, my beef is with a law enforcement or judicial system that allows this many demands for info.

Hold on a second. He's not a typical citizen. He is (was) the director of the CIA. Who knows what he had to sign to get the clearance to qualify for that post. They probably even checked his a**hole to confirm the right number of fecal bits, with an agreement to do so on a routine basis. At that level, the govt. is your mother, your father, your family, your life. No questions.

Anyone trusting Gmail at this point is asking for their privacy to be violated, not just on the high level of ad insertion, but on a deeply personal level–if/when anyone in authority wants to access it. The convenience of Gmail isn't worth it any longer.

Repeat: I am not Google's customer. I am Google's product.

Why the hate? The man is clearly correct. To Google, the average user is the product, whereas the average company (buying ads) is the customer. Take a look at their financials:

For 2011, the revenue stream for "Google Websites" and "Google Network Members Websites" (read: all advertising) counted for a whopping 96% of the revenue. The rest, under "Other", which includes Android, is only 4%.

In short, if the ad business ever goes south, they will monetize your data in any way possible to make money. The company is, and always was, a one-trick pony.

Anyone trusting Gmail at this point is asking for their privacy to be violated, not just on the high level of ad insertion, but on a deeply personal level–if/when anyone in authority wants to access it. The convenience of Gmail isn't worth it any longer.

Repeat: I am not Google's customer. I am Google's product.

Why the hate? The man is clearly correct. To Google, the average user is the product, whereas the average company (buying ads) is the customer. Take a look at their financials:

For 2011, the revenue stream for "Google Websites" and "Google Network Members Websites" (read: all advertising) counted for a whopping 96% of the revenue. The rest, under "Other", which includes Android, is only 4%.

In short, if the ad business ever goes south, they will monetize your data in any way possible to make money. The company is, and always was, a one-trick pony.

So you think Google is the only company monetizing user data?

No, but it is the most successful.

Between the top three tech companies in the world (Apple, Microsoft and Google), Google is the only company with this business model. The other two produce products that are actual and profitable, and have multiple, diverse, revenue streams.

Anyone trusting Gmail at this point is asking for their privacy to be violated, not just on the high level of ad insertion, but on a deeply personal level–if/when anyone in authority wants to access it. The convenience of Gmail isn't worth it any longer.

Repeat: I am not Google's customer. I am Google's product.

Why the hate? The man is clearly correct. To Google, the average user is the product, whereas the average company (buying ads) is the customer. Take a look at their financials:

For 2011, the revenue stream for "Google Websites" and "Google Network Members Websites" (read: all advertising) counted for a whopping 96% of the revenue. The rest, under "Other", which includes Android, is only 4%.

In short, if the ad business ever goes south, they will monetize your data in any way possible to make money. The company is, and always was, a one-trick pony.

So you think Google is the only company monetizing user data?

No, but it is the most successful.

Between the top three tech companies in the world (Apple, Microsoft and Google), Google is the only company with this business model. The other two produce products that are actual and profitable, and have multiple, diverse, revenue streams.

And they also collect your data and sell it, along with your ISP, cable/sat provider etc. At least Google is the most transparent about it.

He had to resign because it had the potential to be an even bigger black eye for the administration than it already was. The Director of the CIA failing to keep his zipper up and having an illicit affair is bad enough, declining to resign thus forcing the President to either force him out or defend him against the opposition when the Administration has much more important things to do is an order of magnitude worse.

Yet Clinton couldn't be ousted from office for the same thing. Go figure.

Anyone trusting Gmail at this point is asking for their privacy to be violated, not just on the high level of ad insertion, but on a deeply personal level–if/when anyone in authority wants to access it. The convenience of Gmail isn't worth it any longer.

Repeat: I am not Google's customer. I am Google's product.

Why the hate? The man is clearly correct. To Google, the average user is the product, whereas the average company (buying ads) is the customer. Take a look at their financials:

For 2011, the revenue stream for "Google Websites" and "Google Network Members Websites" (read: all advertising) counted for a whopping 96% of the revenue. The rest, under "Other", which includes Android, is only 4%.

In short, if the ad business ever goes south, they will monetize your data in any way possible to make money. The company is, and always was, a one-trick pony.

So you think Google is the only company monetizing user data?

No, but it is the most successful.

Between the top three tech companies in the world (Apple, Microsoft and Google), Google is the only company with this business model. The other two produce products that are actual and profitable, and have multiple, diverse, revenue streams.

And they also collect your data and sell it, along with your ISP, cable/sat provider etc. At least Google is the most transparent about it.

You don't understand. Companies are driven by greed. All companies sell your information to a certain degree. But Google's whole business model is based on it. They could not survive without it. The others don't.

"The news this week is full of speculation about how the affair between CIA director David Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, was discovered. The revelation forced Petraeus' resignation on Friday. "

Why did he have to resign? It's not like he forced her to do anything. From what I read they were snooping on his email because they were afraid that his account may have been compromised. They discover that it wasn't. Why couldn't they stop at that? Who cares that he had an affair? Sure, it is something that society likes to punish, but unless she was a Russian or Chinese spy, I dont understan how was this relevant to their original "national security matter" case?

He wasn't forced to resigned per say.

Its rumored he had an affair when actually in the military command, this violates military law, thus illegal.

Even if that rumor is not true, the fact he had an affair means in theory somebody could have held their knowlege of the affair over him ( i.e. blackmail ) for state secrets. In one case he actually broke te law amd thus been fired, in the other, because of his actions he likely would have had his clearance revoked and thus would have been fired.

There is a moral clause to these types of positions, same reason those secret sevice agents lost their jobs, they are expect to act on a higher moral bar then everyone else. Which means going to a country and getting a ( legal ) hooker ant cool.

So he would have been fired no matter way so he simply resigned.

John Hupp wrote:

IIRC, Ms. Broadwell sent threatening emails to a third party from the Gmail account in question. The third party reported the threat to the police, and since the alleged crime crossed state lines, the investigation went to the FBI. IMHO, this sort of situation is not indicative of government overreach.

Also, if I understand correctly, Petraeus and Broadwell shared the Gmail account and used it to conduct their clandestine affair. So Petraeus got caught because his mistress used their "secret" Gmail account to stalk someone, and she got caught for that. Not exactly brilliantly covert operations on either Petraeus' or Broadwell's part.

The FBI went into the investigation thinking "somebody got access to this indivual's account without his knowlege and thus national security could be at risk" ( not that any national secrets were contain in a personal email account but in the sense the account could trick others if it were compromise by say a foreign nation.

He had to resign because it had the potential to be an even bigger black eye for the administration than it already was. The Director of the CIA failing to keep his zipper up and having an illicit affair is bad enough, declining to resign thus forcing the President to either force him out or defend him against the opposition when the Administration has much more important things to do is an order of magnitude worse.

Yet Clinton couldn't be ousted from office for the same thing. Go figure.

He was elected, and the President of the United States. There's no one above him that would need to go to bat for him or expend political capital on protecting him, he only answers to the people he was elected to serve, and the only way to remove him is via impeachment and trial in the Senate. For the same reason, Senators and Representatives can often have affairs that are made public and aren't necessarily expected to resign, though peer pressure in their respective assemblies will often force the issue.

In one case he actually broke te law amd thus been fired, in the other, because of his actions he likely would have had his clearance revoked and thus would have been fired.

He probably could have had his security clearance reviewed and reinstated, but the very fact that would have had to been done because he couldn't keep his little PFC at ease and zipped up would have been enough reason to ask him to resign anyways.

IIRC, Ms. Broadwell sent threatening emails to a third party from the Gmail account in question. The third party reported the threat to the police, and since the alleged crime crossed state lines, the investigation went to the FBI. IMHO, this sort of situation is not indicative of government overreach.

Also, if I understand correctly, Petraeus and Broadwell shared the Gmail account and used it to conduct their clandestine affair. So Petraeus got caught because his mistress used their "secret" Gmail account to stalk someone, and she got caught for that. Not exactly brilliantly covert operations on either Petraeus' or Broadwell's part.

The FBI went into the investigation thinking "somebody got access to this indivual's account without his knowlege and thus national security could be at risk" ( not that any national secrets were contain in a personal email account but in the sense the account could trick others if it were compromise by say a foreign nation.

The FBI probably went into the investigation with no knowledge of Petraeus' involvement. From what I've read, Paula Broadwell sent Jill Kelley *tens of thousands* of emails [http://eepurl.com/rKf91], so this could have started out as a non-classified online stalking case.

The investigation into Paula Broadwell revealed her affair with General Petraeus, and he resigned because of the affair. His resignation may have been because of "national security", "military honor", gross incompetence, behind-the-scenes politicking, or some combination thereof, but it looks to me like the initial investigation was substantially more mundane than any of that.

Timothy B. Lee / Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times.